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Touch Typing by Georgina Bruce

In the room was a large, leather covered desk, and on the desk stood a typewriter, the kind with round black metal keys that have to be stabbed and jabbed with forceful fingers to make their marks on the page. A secretary sat stiffly behind the desk, punching the keys. She didn't look up when Nathan Arch entered the room, though the bell over the door had announced him with a trinng. He stood awkwardly, pulling at the sleeves of his suit jacket, waiting to be noticed.

While he waited, watching the secretary work, Nathan had the strange sensation of becoming unmoored from the earth, the way words spoken over and over lose their meaning, and as if those words were his name: Nathan Arch. He wondered if he could be having a stroke, and reached up to touch his head.

It seemed to Nathan that the secretary was made of wood.

Copyright (c) Georgina Bruce 2009

Goldeneyes by Caroline Clark

This autumn she found the house safe as usual and her few trees heavy with fruit but before the threshold grew a spray of strange flowers like blue-black trumpets with golden hearts. They were so beautiful that she left them to grow (using her back-door instead).When they faded she saved the seeds, planted them in a bowl and put it by her window. Then she started to make ready for the winter.

It was a hard winter. The snow came early and stayed late. The old woman and her beasts kept warm and ate little but the day was near when they would have nothing left.

The old woman woke early in the snow-light and saw that the seeds in her bowl had begun to shoot. As she watched, tall leaves grew like furled cloaks, then opened to reveal three dark shapes - growing fast. She hurried over to the window and, to her amazement, three small figures jumped down from the sill and stood before her, now almost as tall as she was. Their skin was like blue-black velvet, their long black hair hung like cloaks around them and they had golden eyes.